ART CITIES:Athens-Tindara Spartà
Tindara Spartà belongs to a generation of artists who reconsider the domestic sphere as a site of tension, projection, and psychological ambiguity. Having studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Dijon, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice that moves fluidly between painting, sculpture, installation, and staged objects.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Bernier/Eliades Gallery Archive
At the core of Tindara Spartà’s work lies what she describes as an angst-driven, aggressive creative process. Her visual language frequently evokes houses that collapse, implode, or drift away—structures destabilized both physically and metaphorically. These recurring images operate as projections of inner states, where architecture becomes a fragile container of experience rather than a stable refuge. Spartà consistently interrogates the relationship between everyday objects and their environments, focusing on the tensions that arise when the familiar is displaced. Within her compositions, domestic imagery is transformed into a symbolic vocabulary charged with subtle humor and a persistent, underlying unease. In her solo exhibition “MAD HOUSE” Spartà turns explicitly to the concept of the house as both subject and system. The interior is no longer a passive setting but an active, almost sentient terrain—dense, disorienting, and as unknowable as an unexplored landscape. Functional elements such as tiles, pipes, doors, and corners—typically overlooked—are reimagined as openings or vital organs of a living structure. These components expand through repetition, forming grid-like patterns that envelop the space. Motif and structure become the mechanisms through which the work maintains coherence, allowing the viewer to navigate an environment that is otherwise unstable and fragmented. A recurring presence throughout the exhibition is that of dogs. They do not function as anecdotal or decorative figures; rather, they articulate a position within the spatial and emotional logic of the work. For Spartà, dogs embody a mode of inhabiting space defined by attentiveness and permanence. They occupy domestic environments fully—yards, kitchens, hallways—existing in a prolonged present without the impulse to escape. Their relationship to space is not defined by thresholds like doors, but by relational awareness: what matters is not the exit, but the presence of the one who opens it.
Through this lens, the dog becomes a figure of perception and devotion. Spartà highlights what she describes as an asymmetry of recognition between humans and animals: a gap between what is offered and what is understood. The dog observes, adapts, and commits to a shared world, even when that world is unstable or fractured. This quiet, persistent presence contrasts sharply with the volatility of the domestic environments she constructs. In “MAD HOUSE” Spartà does not simply depict the home; she dismantles and reconstructs it as a psychological landscape. The domestic space emerges as a field where intimacy and estrangement coexist, where structure and disintegration are held in a fragile equilibrium. Through this destabilization, her work reveals the house not as a fixed entity, but as a shifting, living condition shaped by perception, memory, and affect.
Photo: Tindara Spartà, La course des Lèvriers (01), 2026, Watercolour on filler on wood 80 x 122 x 6 cm, Photo: Andréa Spartà, © Tindara Spartà, Courtesy the artist and Bernier/Eliades Gallery
Info: Bernier/Eliades Gallery, 11 Eptachalkou Str, Athens, Greece, Duration: 23/4-1/7/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-18:30, Sat 12:00-16:00, https://bernier-eliades.com/
